Woody Guthrie vs. Fred Trump

Our current “president’s” family legacy is so vile that WOODY GUTHRIE – one of America’s greatest social commentators and Folksingers – actually wrote songs about Trump’s racist scumbag father Fred over a half-century ago.

Regarded as one of the most significant figures in American folk music, many of Woody Guthrie’s songs are classics, including “This Land is Your Land.” His music chronicled the plight of common people. He wrote “Old Man Trump about his experiences living in one of Fred Trump’s properties, and another one about Trump called “Trump Made A tramp Out Of Me.”

Woody never recorded the tunes, but lyrics for both songs were recently found in the Woody Guthrie Center’s archives in Oklahoma. Will Kaufman, a professor of American literature and culture at the University of Central Lancashire in Britain alerted the New York Times to this significant discovery.

Guthrie lived in one of Fred Trump’s apartment buildings in the early 1950s and his relationship with the real estate mogul produced some of Woody’s most bitter writings. These songs pit America’s national balladeer against the racist Trump real estate empire.

This becomes all the more relevant in the wake of the racially charged proclamations of US “president” Donald Trump – son of Fred – who last year announced, “My legacy has its roots in my father’s legacy.”

That legacy is racial discrimination. Among other things…(cough).

Only a year into his Beach Haven residency, Woody Guthrie was already lamenting the bigotry that pervaded his new, lily-white neighborhood.

He’d taken to calling “Bitch Havens.”

THE FULL LYRICS:

Old Man Trump
Words by Woody Guthrie, Music by Ryan Harvey

I suppose that Old Man Trump knows just how much racial hate
He stirred up in that bloodpot of human hearts
When he drawed that color line
Here at his Beach Haven family project

Beach Haven ain't my home!
No, I just can't pay this rent!
My money's down the drain,
And my soul is badly bent!

Beach Haven is Trump’s Tower
Where no black folks come to roam,
No, no, Old Man Trump!
Old Beach Haven ain't my home!

I'm calling out my welcome to you and your man both
Welcoming you here to Beach Haven
To love in any way you please and to 
have some kind of a decent place
To have your kids raised up in.  

Beach Haven ain't my home!
No, I just can't pay this rent!
My money's down the drain,
And my soul is badly bent!

Beach Haven is Trump’s Tower
Where no black folks come to roam,
No, no, Old Man Trump!
Old Beach Haven ain't my home!

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